Tulsa City-County Library - Nathaniel Richhttp://www.tulsalibrary.org/tags/nathaniel-rich
enPost-Sandy Disaster Fiction by Nick Abrahamsonhttp://www.tulsalibrary.org/blog/post-sandy-disaster-fiction-nick-abrahamson
<div class="field field-name-field-news-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.tulsalibrary.org/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/blogfiles/nick%20abrahamson%20012%20%282%29_5.JPG?itok=lpJN8qXY" width="146" height="220" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>It’s rather easy to be drawn to disaster fiction. Writers and poets task themselves with navigating and giving voice to our collective anxieties. They at once offer clarity and comfort. It’s fiction as cultural critic, as social worker for the collective psyche. It’s interpreter of events and also a proscription of remedies. It’s a balance, too. Though the art is political in subject, it should still retain the qualities of art. It must be emotionally generous without being sentimental, tackle pride without preaching jingoism. <a href="http://tccl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=author&amp;q=don+delillo" title=" Don DeLillo">Don DeLillo </a>proved himself to be perfect for the post 9/11 novelist years before the Towers were brought down. All of his novels are imbued with an existential dread, the feeling that something is off in the air, a little too still, a cataclysm slowly churning forward from just past the horizon. And now with <a href="http://tccl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=title&amp;search_category=title&amp;q=odds+against+tomorrow&amp;commit=Search&amp;searchOpt=catalogue" title=" Odds against Tomorrow">Odds Against Tomorrow</a> Nathaniel Rich submits his entry for the post-Sandy novel.<br />
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<p><a href="http://tccl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=title&amp;search_category=title&amp;q=odds+against+tomorrow&amp;commit=Search&amp;searchOpt=catalogue" title=" Odds against Tomorrow">Odds Against Tomorrow </a>opens quickly, introducing the reader to the protagonist during a major disaster in a large U.S. metropolis. Mitchell Zukor is an analytics and math prodigy, and like many exceptionally gifted individuals his overactive brain is both gift and curse. Though he’s been tapped to work for a large insurance company specializing in foreseeing and insuring against major catastrophes, his worst-case projections render him paranoid, a Wall-Street doomsayer street prophet. When one of his predictions comes true, he’s caught amid a major, unprecedented disaster.<br />
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<p>There are hallmarks of Nathaniel Rich’s writing that invoke other accomplished novelists. I’d posit his language and voice owes a debt to <a href="http://tccl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=author&amp;q=don+delillo" title=" Don DeLillo">DeLillo </a>and perhaps more obliquely <a href="http://tccl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=author&amp;search_category=author&amp;q=david+foster+wallace&amp;commit=Search&amp;searchOpt=catalogue" title=" David Foster Wallace">David Foster Wallace</a>. His prescient content and tone clearly showcases he’s done homework on predictive mathematical formulae, disaster relief, and projected societal behaviors as a result of national disasters. I’m personally very interested to see Rich’s work in the future and how he’ll define his work as a novelist.<br />
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</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/don-delillo" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Don Delillo</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/nathaniel-rich" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Nathaniel Rich</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/david-foster-wallace" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">David Foster Wallace</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-category field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/blog/reading-addict" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Reading Addict</a></div></div></div>Tue, 09 Jul 2013 20:59:19 +0000Cindy1950 at http://www.tulsalibrary.orghttp://www.tulsalibrary.org/blog/post-sandy-disaster-fiction-nick-abrahamson#comments